PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Science Fiction Sunday 93

 
I was up fairly early and finished The Classic Sci-Fi Ultimate Collection box set today. There were three movies left and they're all pretty short. I started with the movie that has the very least science fiction in it. Cult Of The Cobra is a 1955 supernatural thriller set in 1945. It starts out somewhere in Asia at a bazaar. No country is identified in the movie and the bazaar looks like a mix of many cultures and places. Some American military guys are taking a look around. They meet a snake charmer who will take them to a secret Lamian snake cult meeting for a hundred bucks. It's dangerous, if they are discovered they will be killed. That's the kind of Asian adventure that I want to avoid. They see a snake lady come out of a basket. She tells a story through her movements. As you can see below that's some story.

 

One of the guys blows their cover by taking a flash picture. There's some fighting and he runs away after grabbing the snake lady's basket. The rest of the guys fight their way out of the building, after being cursed by snake cult priest Edward Platt (the Chief on Get Smart), only to find their friend near death, bitten by a snake. After being taken to a hospital it looks like he'll live. In the night a cobra comes to finish the job. Saddened, the guys head home, back to civilian life in New York. That's the guys there below.

  

Left to right we have William Reynolds, James Dobson, David Jannsen, Richard Kelly, Richard Long and William Marshall. All pretty good character actors that did a lot of movies and tv. That's Edward Platt there in the middle, and even though that isn't a very good screen cap, you can seee that he sure doesn't look like he belongs in that scene. What kind of costume is that? The pic on the right is Faith Domergue , the snake lady, and Kathleen Hughes, the love interest between Marshall and Richard Long. She picks Dick and Marshall is a wounded man when Faith moves in next door. Marshall doesn't know she's the snake lady when she screams in the night. He comes running. I've seen enough movies to know to cower under the covers and call the police when there's yelling on my block in the middle of the night. Faith continues to snake out and, picking off the interlopers one by one, she gets the cult's revenge. The guys are slow to believe but eventually the last couple of them fight back and the snake lady is vanquished. It's an ok movie but not a great one. It does serve as a reminder to keep your nose out of occult business. That shit can be dangerous.

 
Dr. Cyclops is a 1940 film that the Wikipedia says is the first US color science fiction film. It's directed by Ernest B Schoedsack. He directed some good films, here's a few of my favorites from his short list, King Kong, The Most Dangerous Game (1932), The Son of Kong, and Mighty Joe Young. Dr Cyclops invites another scientist to his Peruvian research lab. It's a shack but no one much mentions that. Dr Cyclops is having trouble with is eyes. Since he strangled his old partner he's been having a hard time seeing what's in his microscope. Dr C asks the other scientist to look at some crystals in his microscope, and after getting an answer he tells the guy to leave. Dr Cyclops is a bit of a dick.

 
The visitors get mad and decide to see what he's up to, especially once they figure out he's got pitchblend lying about. That means radium which means money. Turns out the doc has been using the power from the mine to run his machine. It shrinks organic matter. He strinks the whole bunch of them and keeps them locked up. He kills the other science guy when he discovers that the effects of the ray are wearing off. The others escape and try to kill Dr. Cyclops. After some adventures, during which poor Pedro is killed, they succeed and vanquish the giant monster. In the last scene they are back to normal and the heading back to civilization. It's a pretty entertaining bit of business. Kind of goofy but fun. The effects aren't too bad for the time and the characters fun to watch, especially the highly entertaining Dr Cyclops as played by Albert Dekker.

 
The Leech Woman is the third of the trio I watched. It's only science fiction because of chemistry. A cold blooded science guy, Paul Terry, works to create an anti-aging formula. An ancient woman, played by Estelle Hemsley, arrives at his office claiming to be nearly 150 years old. She has a remarkable tale of a cure for old age. She takes a powder and it does seem to reverse the aging process. The solution lies in her village in Africa. For her passage home she tells him the secret. Paul tells his wrinkley wife, Colleen Gray, about the formula and they head for Africa, hiring guide John Van Dreelen. They don't get along too much. The group get to the old woman's village where they are captured. Estelle is about to have the secret formula that will really reverse her age. Typically the anti-aging formula requires someone to die. Killed by jabbing a specially carved ring into their pineal gland. The liquid is mixed with rare orchid pollen and viola instant youth.

 

The problem with the youth juice? It doesn't last too long, a day or so, then you need to kill again. Colleen gets the chance to take some juice and she picks her hubby as the supplier of the pineal gland fluid. He's pretty mad, at least as long as he stays alive, which is only a short time. Colleen and the guide escape and she kills him when he gets stuck in some quicksand. Back in the USA she starts killing again, appearing as the widow of Paul and the young niece when she can get her wrinkley old hands on some pineal juice. As the young woman she falls for Grant Williams. He returns the interest, ending his relationship with Gloria Talbot. That's Grant and Gloria being watched by the MST3k crew on the right below. It was selected as an 8th season episode of the series.

 
Gloria confronts young Colleen, left pic above, and gets killed and stuffed in a closet. Guess Gloria didn't see that coming. The police are investigating the death of a sleazy guy. He was one of Colleen's victims and luckily for the investigation he has her name on a piece of paper in his pocket. The police show up just after Gloria got stuffed in the closet and find the body still warm. Colleen, starting to turn old in front of them, panics and jumps out of the window to her death. It's better than the typical fair on MST3K but not by much. Not one that appears in my rotation too often but I enjoy it when I watch it.

Friday Night Movies 287

We watched the 6th George Romero zombie movie Survival Of The Dead. Some National Guardsmen have a terrible experience with zombies on the 6th day since the dead arose. Most of their men were killed and turned into zombies. They're all bummed out that they had to kill their friends. A small group of  the guardsmen leave their unit to rob and steal to survive. Over on Plum Island, off the coast of Delware, two family's feud. The head of the family dressed like sailors wants to kill the zombies. The head of the family dressed like cowboys wants to keep the zombies with them. That just doesn't seem like a very good idea, even if you believe there might be a cure, but they are old and stubborn heads, who are going to get bitten or shot. And there's lots of zombie and people shooting as their conflict heats up. No one seems to get along very well. The guardsmen show up and there's more conflict. There's the usual gang of idiots you expect in a film like this and they get picked off one by one. There's a lot of humor, not all of it that great. There's not much that stands out in the film, it seems too much like the stuff you'd see on SyFy. It didn't do well in the money making arena, it's $142,000 gross hardly making a dent in the $4 million cost. That was August 1's total, there's been a dvd out since. It might do well on dvd. It scores a 5.3 on the IMDb and that should garner some sales and rentals. I'm sitting on the fence on getting one. I don't know that I would want to watch it that often.

I felt the same way about Smokin' Aces 2: Assassin's Ball, the 2009 direct to video prequel to the 2007 film Smokin' Aces. That first movie was written and directed by Joe Carnahan. It's was pretty entertaining for an eye candy packed shoot 'em up with a bit of story. The film making is as much about the visual style as it is about the story. Lots of little bits and pieces of digital wizardry toss you from one scene to another. Simple wipe, left in the dust for a cgi extravaganza. I have mixed feelings on this kind of film making. The prequel is directed by P. J. Pesce, who's got his own vision and bag of visual tricks. The only other movie I've seen of Pesce's is From Dusk To Dawn 3: The Hangman's Daughter. I enjoyed that movie for the most part. Not great but entertaining. I haven't seen it in a while. In SA2:AB the assassin's are a nasty bunch and they are pitted against each other in a rush to collect the huge bounty on Tom Berenger. He's an FBI guy with a $3 million hit on his ass. More FBI agents  secure him in an high tech bunker in old underground tunnels below Chicago. They've got a bunch of guys scattered all about. None of them are any match for the hordes of professional assassins with inventive murderin' skills. One gang uses dynamite wrapped midgets in clown suits fired out of a circus cannon to attack the club the bunker is hidden under. I have to admit that's not something I think I've seen before and all I can say is that gang of assassins need a smokin'. Luckily most of them get theirs. Pretty much no one survives. A couple of the FBI guys and a couple of assassins. The actors are all pretty good and their dialog is mostly entertaining but the characters are sadly lacking smarts. They fall for the easiest ruses and get blasted for their act of stupidity. "Don't open that door, motherfucker!" If only they could have heard me. It drags in a few spots, sometimes the talking scenes just seem to go on too long. Glad I got it from NetFlix. If I run out of movies I haven't seen to add to my queue, though that could take several years, I can add SA2:AB to it and see it again. Takes up less space, not having to store that rarely accessed item. That some practicalness. Digital seems to be the way we as a media consuming culture are going. I have mixed feelings about that, no matter how attractive it is.

What I Read In April 2010

Slow month for books last April, only 5 of them. It was the Meredith Ann Pierce books that slowed me down. It happens sometimes. The month started well with two enjoyable novels.

  
Knight's Castle by Edward Eager has the children of two girls from Eager's earlier novels Half Magic and Magic By The Lake encounter magical adventures of their own. The first two book are set in the 1920's and this one is set closer to it's 1956 publishing date. There are 4 children, Martha's Roger and Ann, and Katherine's Eliza and Jack, who are thrown together for the summer. Aunt Katherine supplies a great toy castle, Walter Scott's Ivanhoe supplies the setting, and an old metal toy knight supples the magic. The kids have some adventures and Robin Hood even makes an appearance. It's a fun read as most of Eager's books are. The same kids would appear in The Time Garden. I'll get to that sooner or later. I've been finding Eager's book in the used book stores and as I see them I pick them up. Nothing better than a cheap book.

Dragon's Breath by E. D. Baker is the second novel in the Princess Emma series. I'd already read the first book in the series, The Frog Princess. Well, Emma's back home from that adventure and there's more trouble in the kingdom. The neighbor's are invading,and Emma's annoying grandmother has turned the Green Witch's boyfriend into an otter. That distraction is a problem since the Green Witch is needed to help keep the kingdom safe. Emma and Eadric join the Green Witch on a quest to find the three ingredients to turn him back to a man. Like the first novel this was a fun read. There are lots of things going on and the characters are entertaining. I'll definately keep this. I always like a good fast paced humorous fantasy with fun characters. I have a third book and there are more after that. Keeping an eye peeled for those, that's my quest. Maybe I can trade the next two books in and use the credit to buy an E. D. Baker book.

  
A Gathering of Gargoyle's & The Pearl of the Soul of the World by Meredith Ann Pierce are the second and third book in the series. I had a hard time finishing them and don't want to talk about it. I'm kidding. I'm not going to say they sucked but they sure weren't for me. There's lots of stuff that happens, luckily I've forgotten most of it and I'm way too lacking interest to go look for the plot and stuff out on the internet. Number 2 starts off where the first one left off and three wraps up the story. It's really just one huge novel broken up into three parts. It gets weirder and weirder and eventually it ends. I think everyone dies. It's all sad and moody and confusing. I didn't care much when it was going on and I was dragging my ass on finishing. Not sure why I feel I need to finish books I start. It's got to be some flaw in my head, if I had to guess. Joe, one of the regulars at movie night, will just stop and toss the book on his 'get rid of' pile and forget about it. That sounds like a skill to aquire. I did toss the books on my 'to go' pile. All I see is store credit.

Science Fair by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson was much more entertaining. I actually read it between the last two Meredith books. I needed a break from the drearyness. Science Fair is set in a high school and the story centers around the science fair. There's a lot of plot, some fun story elements, and entertaining dialog. Foreign nationals have infiltrated the school staff and they have a sneaky plan to take over the USA. Toby wants to win the science fair but he gets caught up in something bigger than his desire to win. He teams up with his pals and some odd characters to figure out the secret plot and save the day. Not as good as the Peter and the Starcatchers series but still pretty good. I'll re-read it sometime in the future.

Science Fiction Sunday 92

 
I'm back lookin' in The Classic Science Fiction Ultimate Collection for my sf fix and I put in The Mole People first. It's a 1956 movie that was directed by Virgil W. Vogel. This was the first movie by the guy that directed The Land Unknown. After that he directed tv episodes for the next 30 years.

  

John Agar leads some guys on an archaeology expedition to the Himalayan Mountains. That's John, Nester Paiva and Hugh Beaumont on the left and Cynthia Patrick on the right. She plays the romantic interest for John Agar. Hugh and the guys find an underground civilization of albinos, decendants of ancient Sumerians, that are afraid of their flashlights. Highly ridgid the underground dwellers keep their group at the same number by killing off the excess. Rather unattractive mutants are kept as slaves to work the mushroom farms. The guys meet Cynthia, who has regular skintones, and find out she's an outcast for not being pale enough. She's pretty and John takes a liking to her. No girl for Nester or Hugh. There's a king of the underground city and his high priest. The high priest hates the new comers, they have a magical flashlight that makes them more powerful than him, and he plots against them. First Nester is killed and then things go from bad to worse when the mutants revolt.

 
I love the high priest's hat of many points. That hat's one of the things that I remembered from seeing the movie as a kid. Nice though it is, it won't save him from the mistreated mutants and their sharp claws. John and Patricia and Hugh manage to escape and climb to the surface. There's an earthquake and she's crushed. It's a pretty stupid ending that has always bugged me. Guys yakking over on the IMDb message board for the movie said that in an interview with Cynthia, she said that the original ending has the trio walk off the mountain together. Some studio exec, thinking people would be upset over a white John Agar hooking up with a Sumerian gal, had them reshoot the ending so she's crushed. I could believe that, and it just makes it more stupid. Maybe that's one of the reason's it barely scores over 4 at the IMDb. Mostly it's not a bad movie, the mole guys are still pretty cool, I just don't care to watch it that often. I remembered little bits and pieces of this movie from seeing it as a kid. I didn't remember it's name but Sperhauk and Greg knew it right away. This was years ago about when we started buying vcr's and lots of these old movies were turning up at the rental stores. I remember more of the next movie, also from the same box set.

The Incredible Shrinking Man was a movie that impressed me when I was a kid. That's probably why so many scenes are still stuck in my head. It's one of the better movies in the TCSFUC box set and is a deserved SF classic. Jack Arnold directed it in 1957. It's one of many good sf movies he made in the 1950's. The screenplay is by Richard Matheson from his novel. Matheson is a pretty good writer, many of his books are worth reading, and he wrote many good screenplays, for movies and tv. In TISM Grant Williams gets covered with some sparkly bits of glitter when a mysterious fog rolls across him while he and his wife are at sea in their boat. Days later he notices he's getting smaller. He tells us what he's thinking in voice over narration. He keeps shrinking and shrinking and the doctors can't help him. What the heck was in that cloud? Grant gets so small he has to live in a doll house. He nearly gets eaten by the cat but luckily his wife arrives in the nick of time. On his second encounter with the cat he falls into the basement. His wife finds a bloody rag, sees the cat lick it's lips, and assumes the worst. Later a tv newcaster reports the incredible shrinking man died from an encounter with a house cat but Grant's still alive and now so small that a spider is bigger than he is. That spider has some cake and Grant needs it. They battle to the death. I remembered that spider fighting scene from when I was a kid. I'd hate to come home to man size spiders in my house. Eventually Grant is so small he becomes part of the cosmos or some such. Here's his last bit of narration before the end of the movie, it was added to the film by Jack Arnold.

I was continuing to shrink, to become... what? The infinitesimal? What was I? Still a human being? Or was I the man of the future? If there were other bursts of radiation, other clouds drifting across seas and continents, would other beings follow me into this vast new world? So close - the infinitesimal and the infinite. But suddenly, I knew they were really the two ends of the same concept. The unbelievably small and the unbelievably vast eventually meet - like the closing of a gigantic circle. I looked up, as if somehow I would grasp the heavens. The universe, worlds beyond number, God's silver tapestry spread across the night. And in that moment, I knew the answer to the riddle of the infinite. I had thought in terms of man's own limited dimension. I had presumed upon nature. That existence begins and ends in man's conception, not nature's. And I felt my body dwindling, melting, becoming nothing. My fears melted away. And in their place came acceptance. All this vast majesty of creation, it had to mean something. And then I meant something, too. Yes, smaller than the smallest, I meant something, too. To God, there is no zero. I still exist!

Matheson wrote a sequel in which the wife shrank but it never got made. TISM is a pretty darn good movie but the sad story is keeping from putting it in frequent rotation. It's well worth a look.

Friday Night Movies 286

 

We watched the Blu-ray of The Wolfman. It's the 2010 remake, directed by Joe Johnston. He's a guy who got started working effects on the Star Wars movies then in the late 90's started directing with Honey, I Shrunk The Kids. He followed that with The Rocketeer and Jumanji. I like several of his movies. He's only made a few films and he's working on the new Captain America movie now. Benicio Del Toro plays Lawrence Talbot, an actor working in London in 1891. That's one of the first big changes from the original. That movie was made in 1941 and seems to be set in about the same time period. They use cars. In the 2010 movie Emily Blunt plays Benicio's brother's wife. She comes to see him telling of the missing brother and appealing for his help. He refuses but next scene he's on the train to Blackmoor, a small town in the English countryside. Anthony Hopkins plays Benicio's dad and he lives in a big old house. It's pretty cool looking. That's the house in the movie on the left and Chatsworth House as it normally looks on the right. The whole movie has that dreary look to it.
 

Benicio learns on his arrival that his brother was found dead. His body was savaged by some beast and the locals blame the dancing bear at the gypsy camp. They are staying near the town offering their brand of entertainment. Benicio, now on a quest to find out what happened to his brother, drops in to check things out. He's visiting with the gypsy fortune teller when the local angry townspeople show up looking to kill the bear. During the angry confrontation the werewolf blasts through the place slicing up everyone who gets in his path. Benicio gets chomped on and stays in bed for a month. He rises a day or so before the full moon. The night of the full moon Benicio learns the truth and he changes into a werewolf. He goes out killing and next morning his father leads the police to him. Incarcerated he's given electroshock and dunked in a pool filled with icy water to help cure his delusions. Little do they know. During the month Benicio is chained up in the Asylum his father comes to visit and more truth is revealed. Daddy's a dick. The doctor, a smug bastard who likes his torture therapy and doesn't believe in werewolves, gets his when Benicio wolfs out and tosses him through a window. He's impaled on a spikey fence and the werewolf runs about London. Hugo Weaving plays the Scotland Yard inspector who is pretty much useless against a superpowered werewolf. Benicio heads home for a final confrontation with daddy.

I enjoyed it more than most remakes I have seen. I'd watch it again. It's dark and moody and pretty cool looking. It reminds me of the 30's Universal movies, which I am a fan of. It sounds like the unrated version is the better version to watch. Might explain why the theatrical didn't do as well as it might. Not very many good reviews and some haters over at the IMDb didn't like it too much but it scores well with people in general racking up a 6.2. That might be a little low. The score is a bit noisey but it's Danny Elfman. I'll have to keep an eye out for it when it gets cheaper.

Sperhauk found a cheap copy of a 4 pack of low budget horror movies, all of which were produced by Sam Katzman. We watched Zombies of Mora Tau. It's a 1957 movie directed by Edward Cahn. He directed 131 pictures between 1931 and 1962. I've seen a few of them but not many. Invasion of the Saucer Men, The She-Creature and IT! The Terror From Beyond Space stand out. ZOMT shares a story element with The Wolfman (and many others). A son, or granddaughter in this case, arrives home after a long absence and gets caught up with monsters. Autumn Russell stars as the girl who returns home. Sam the chauffer picks her up and on the drive to her grandmother's house hits a man in the road. Autumn gets all bent out of shape even after he tells her that it was no man. Her grandmother welcomes her home and explains it really was no man. It was a zombie. It takes a while to make Autumn believe that the zombies are real. Some treasure hunters show up in a ship. They are after the diamonds. The stones were stolen by some sailors about 60 years before. They went crazy and many of them were killed. The zombies were born out of that mess and all these years later, unable to rest, they are still guarding the diamonds, which are in the safe in the hold of a sunken ship. Five other expeditions have taken a crack at the jewels and all they got for their trouble was a free grave with a blank wooden cross to mark their passing.

Once the zombies trip to the treasure hunters presence they start attacking, both on land and under the water. They kidnap Autumn and there's a bit of a rescue. The zombies have a nice clean crypt with matching coffins. The noisey, ignorant wife of the boss man is kidnapped and turned into a zombie. Still not listening to grandmother they bring the wife back to the house. They aren't a clever bunch that's for sure. There's some diving action and the underwater effects aren't too bad for such a low budget film. They have to use those old diving suits since scuba wasn't readily available in those days. There's more running about and fighting the zombies. The zombies are super human in strength but they are afraid of fire. Why didn't they just burn them? Not sure but grandmother says they can only be released from their curse if the diamonds are destroyed, so maybe you can't destroy them that way. It's not a great script. The diamonds are recovered from the safe and that causes more trouble. Grandmother eventually "destroys" the diamond in a pretty dumb scene at the end of the movie. Not your best film but one that's worth a gander for the fan of such things. The dvd has three other fun films which we probably will get around too. I picked up dvdr copies of three of them from Turner Classic Movies a while back  but who knows when they will return. I'd buy the dvd if I spotted it cheap too. The quality of the transfer was pretty good, there are some trailers and short films tossed in the two disc set.

Harry Potter Hogwarts Game

 

I had to pick up a copy of the LEGO Harry Potter Hogwarts Game. It's Harry Potter and LEGO! The game board is Hogwarts school and you need to build it. You build a largish board with corner towers for each house. There are classrooms in the middle that the players need to collect an object from. The classrooms and the hallways move during the game. That makes it harder to get to the classrooms to get the bits and pieces you need to finish the game. I sort of skimmed the game instructions. The building instructions are in a seperate booklet. The game, once built, fits into the box but you need to take down the towers in corners and tip over the larger Astronomy Tower in the middle. There are some useful pieces in the box but I'm not going to take it apart. I wouldn't mind two or three more to take apart. You can always buy the interesting parts on Bricklink but there's 322 parts and 9 of the little microfigs and I thought I would want to buy a lot of them. It's much better value to buy a set and part it out. I wouldn't be opposed to loaning a moc I was building a part or two but I'd be bummed out if something got lost and I had to replace it. That's a lot of bother, putting an order in for one part. And really, you can never order one part on Bricklink. Theoretically it's possible but practically? So that single part becomes a single part of a larger order that now costs as much as a set might cost.

   

A majority of the parts are small. Many of them are highly useful for the right builder. There's a cool looking yellow frog and a dark brown crouching cat. Those would be some what more useful to me, as opposed to the red and blue spiders, neat though they are. You can find them on Bricklink for about a buck each. That's not so bad. There's also 4 of those 8x16 dark bley tiles and those are usually 75 cents to a buck each on BL. They can come in mighty handy for quick road building or roofs.
 
   

These 2x2 tiles with a stud in the middle at another part that would be hard one not to plunder out of the box. You get one each of the ones shown and those babies are 75 cents and up on bricklink. There's also a dozen of the dark bleyand a dozen of the light bley. Those only start at 2 bits for the dark blay and 50 cents for the light blay. I think people will find those handy, no matter what you build.
 
        

That's a new 2x2 panel in tan. People were interested in it at the TwinLUG meeting. There are 3 dice face, one, two and three, but no 4 through 6. Those missing numbers would have come in handy to make the dice part into a traditional dice. The Maurauder's Map returns to Hogwarts. There's an interesting arrow symbol and a nice Hogwarts crest. The rest of the parts are a nice mix with good amounts of reddish brown, the grays, tan and a nice number of sand green cones.

   

       

I thought these guys were pretty cute. Amazing detail for something so small. LEGO has become good at printing on minifigs and they are taking advantage of that. Glad I don't feel a need to own all minifigs. That would be a costly and disappointing road to travel. The arms remind me of the old minifigs. I have picked up a few of those in various colors to have. They are relatively cheap 10-20 cents. The Hogwarts microfigs run about 75 cents to 3 bucks on Bricklink. Glad I picked them up. Even if I don't play the game I can use the figs for something. You never know what tomorrow will bring.

The Savage Girl

I hadn't mentioned seeing anything fun that I had downloaded from the Internet Archive for a while. I hadn't seen much worth mentioning until last sunday when I watched The Savage Girl. It's a 1932 jungle movie with a bit of comedy tossed in. An adventurer, played by Walter Byron, is giving a lecture at a rich men's club about his recent travels in Africa. Walter is a Canadian who was born in my home town of Winnipeg and according to the Wikipedia died there. He was in the 1920 Olympics playing goalie for the Winnipeg Falcon's who won the Gold Medal. He's big and tall and handsome. A drunken rich guy, played by Harry Myers, figures he needs a zoo so he tells Byron that he will fund a new trip to Africa to get some critters. Harry had a career that started in 1908 and ended in 1938 when he died of pneumonia at the age of 56. He wasn't in much that I have seen. He seems to be in a lot of small parts, many of which are uncredited in his IMDb listing.

  
Byron, after finding out that Harry is on the level, takes him up on his offer, and they book passage on the next ship to Africa. On the way to the ship Harry is chatting with the cab driver. The cab driver has always had a dream of going to Africa. Next thing you know Harry has hired the cabbie and his cab and they are being unloaded off the ship in The Dark Continent. I don't think people call Africa that much anymore. I guess it's less mysterious now. They hire a guide and the safari is off, some walking, and Harry riding in his cab, still drunk. They capture a lion but someone lets it go. That someone is the savage girl, played by Rochelle Hudson, who has been living in the jungle long enough to become a legend. The guys capture her and she falls for Byron. The guide thinks he should get some savage girl too but Byron thumps him a bit and tosses him out of the group. The guide returns with some tribesmen to get his vengence on and Byron is captured. Harry sort of saves the day and there's a rescue involving the cab. The bad guy is vanquished and the couple reunited. It's silly movie that was fairly entertaining. I like the cab going about Africa. The acting is ok and the woods in California almost a passable Africa, especially in black and white. There's some stock footage of Africa tossed in to make you think you're there and for an hour or so I was.

Science Fiction Sunday 91

 
The Land Unknown is another movie from The Classic Science Fiction Ultimate Collection. It's a 1957 Universal Picture directed by Virgil W. Vogel. He was a film editor who's first movie was The Mole People which he followed with The Kettles on Old MacDonalds Farm. After The Land Unknown he went on to direct tv episodes of many popular shows through 1995. TLU is a pretty entertaining film about some science guys and a gal reporter on an expedition to Antarctica. Their helicopter runs into a pterodactyl in a storm and plunges into a hidden dinosaur filled jungle in the middle of a volcano. I know what it's like to have a dangerous job; I dropped a ream of paper the other day and it nearly hit my foot. The guys lack the part to fix the engine and the fuel supply is low. The radio cann't get through to the planes flying above looking for them. On top of that a T-Rex comes to visit and he's hungry. That's him below.

 
Rex gets called off by a horn like sound. Is someone there? Yep. It's a guy who was trapped there years ago. He lives in a cave, dodges dinos, and has gone rather 'round the bend. There's a lot of running from the dinosaurs both on land and water. There's some conflict with the crazy guy, who's a hankerin' for the reporter. Sad for him she's got somethin' going with lead hunk Jock Mahoney. The gal is played by Shirley Patterson, billed as Shawn Smith in this movie, who's Canadian born and from my old home town of Winnipeg. That's her with Jock below. Somehow most of the edges of their clothes seemed to have fallen off.

   
Like many of the movies of the 50's there was a comic version from Dell. That's a page from inside the cover with some stills from the movie. That model of the T-Rex just looked pretty entertaining, so I stuck it in there. The dinosaurs in the movie are of mixed quality. The T-Rex looks like a guy in a suit and some of them are monitor lizards in a model set. There are some carnivorous plants that grab at our heroes. They look ok as do most of the full size sets. The miniature jungle looks great occasionally and the model work is pretty good most of the time. You can get a great amount of detail when your helicopter is 6 or 8 feet long. Still and all it's entertaining and that's the best thing about the movie. That and the dinosaurs. The good guys escape the dinos and everyone gets out in time for Jock and Shawn to get busy.

I NetFlix'd 9 because I was sort of interested in it but wasn't thinking I would want to buy it. I'm glad I did take a gander at it. It's a post apocolypse story in an alternate earth, at least according to Shane Acker, the writer and director of the original award winning short and this movie. All the humans are dead, killed by bullets and gas bombs. It looks vaguely European but there is stuff that wouldn't be there in our universe. Like a giant killing machine. Oooh, we sure could use that right about now, huh. Take your mind off some of the other stuff going on. A scientist made the machine to make stuff for people but the evil dictator used it to make piles of dead bodies. Then the machine goes out of control and the humans are toast. Can a scientist make a robot so powerful even he can't destroy it? Before he dies the scientist makes 9 small robot guys, giving each one a bit of his soul, and a number on it's back. He also creates a round glowing device which 9 finds when he awakens at the start of the movie. The only life left is robotic life and some of it is deadly, like the mean and nasty catbot, and it's arial conterpart, a deadly giant mechanical bird that's all claws and beak. 9 hooks up with another little robot guy and is finding out about his new world when the cat critter attacks. They escape and 9 meets more little robot guys. More back story. The bird attacks and 7 is kidnapped. On a rescue mission 9 accidentally restarts the killing machine with the device. The killing machine can suck the soul out of the little robot guys. 9 has to work pretty hard to shut it down. The world our little guys live in is all rundown, overgrown with weeds and mold, and sharp points where everything was shattered by bombs and destroyed by fire. There isn't much color at times, dark greens, browns and grays buried in black. The animation is good, there are plenty of interesting things to look at. It was entertaining to watch but I wasn't thinking too much of the whole story. More interesting as a concept. The original short is packaged with the movie and that's interesting to watch. There are some good making of featurettes and an ok commentary. If I found this for 3 or 4 bucks I might get one.

TwinLUG Meeting 8-15-10

   
We had 10 today. Me, Steve S, Gary, Steve D, Charles, Peter, Erik, Mark, and Mike. Max was taking the pictures. We have a photo of Max below, courtesy of his nice wife. Gary brought yummy home made brownies. I brought Circus Peanuts and the LEGO Hogwarts game. It has new pieces and old pieces in new colors. More on that later. Charles brought a nice facade and some vehicles. Steve D brought a nice European Ice Cream Shop in sand green. Love that color. Mark brought a copy of the San Diego Comic Con LEGO Star Wars Cube Dude box set and broke the seal right in front of everyone. I like the Cube Dudes but have little or no interest in making any. Nothing was planned for the meeting so we yakked about LEGO and stuff like that.

Then a bunch of us went over to the Mall Of America to say good bye to the LEGO store. It's going to be remodeled over the next two months. We hear rumors of what it going to be like but nothing concrete. We'll know in a couple of months. Right now the store is setting up temporary shop in the old SpongeBob store. I took a few more picture to add to the growing number I already have posted on Flickr. We wandered around the store a bit and joked with Asst Manager Randy (pic on right) about stealing stuff from the old displays. He reminded me that I come in so often he knows my name, where I live and where I work. Damn! I bought a couple of the small Kingdom's sets to appease him. I got the last of the dark green Wizard impulse set on the shelf. They weren't restocking anything as they were planning to move everything over to the new location after they close at 7pm. That's me, Max, Gary's profile and Charles below.

 
 
We had some dinner in the food court above the store. We could see the space station and shuttle very well. We sat and gabbed about LEGO and other silly things. Then it was one last walk through the store to catch a few more pictures. Eventually most everyone drifted off to home and such. Me too. I'll be curious to see the new store in October, especially the Pick-A-Brick wall. It's rumored to that there will be upwards of a thousand bins, climbing two stories in a massive multicolored wall of PAB goodness. There will be  dozens of helper monkeys to climb up and throw your bricks down to you. No matter how big the display of bins it won't matter unless LEGO gets the different parts to pick from. Those bins could all be filled with 2x4 brick. In 5 colors. Well, you know what you say when they world hands you 2x4 bricks? Build bigger.

Friday Night Movies 285

We watched a couple of movies that told me not to watch them again. This happens occasionally and I usually do listen. There are so many movies I have seen that I have never revisited. That's actually a good thing, makes more time for the good stuff.

No Country For Old Men is a 2007 Cohen brothers movie set in 1980. It's based on a novel by Cormac MacCarthy. Not a guy I read, in fact, he's a guy to avoid if you're like me and don't care for depressing novels about the sad sorry side of life and death. I don't read mainstream novels for the most part. And even though McCarthy's The Road is a post apocalyptic story, which I sometimes like, I don't much want to see it either. Joe says the movie is about three times more depressing than the Cohen's movie. Sure doesn't say "Watch me!" to me. In NCFOM Josh Brolin plays a guy who comes across a bunch of dead Mexican's in the desert. Instead of running he strolls right down into the mess. The ground is littered with the bodies of several bloody men and a dog with holes in it. Really, who the hell brings their dog to a drug deal? That's some stupid shit. Brolin finds a badly shot guy who's still alive. He's begging for water but there's no water. There is a pickup truck filled with wrapped plastic bags and a little ways away from the carnage is a guy. He's dead and beside him is a satchel with 2 million bucks inside. Josh takes the money and goes home. Stupidly he returns to the scene later that night with a gallon of water for the last dying guy. Some horrible people find him there and the chase is on. They know who he is, where he lives, and who they need to kill. Javier Bardem plays a nasty psycho murderer who seems to kill pretty much all the time. There was a lot of buzz when the movie came out, especially for Javier, and it did win four Academy Awards for Best Picture, director, adaptation, and a nod to Javier for the Best Supporting Actor. It is a well made movie with lots of great character actors going to town. As always I enjoyed seeing Tommy Lee Jones and the large tv and BluRay really showed the craggyness of his face. I was with the movie for a lot of it but near the end it pushed me away. It's all dark and black and sometimes I like that but this film didn't have a good ending for me. I enjoyed the Cohen brothers Fargo and A Simple Plan much better than NCFOM. Not going to make it to my buy list and neither will the next movie we watch.

Spearhauk found a copy of The Spirited Killer Trilogy on clearance. It's three movies packed onto one disc. We had seen Spirited Killer a while back. I basically said don't watch it. In 2007 I had picked up a copy of the two disc dvd of Spirited Killer because the box said that Tony Jaa was in the movie. He's cool and he is in there, in one scene, near the end of the movie. Spirited Killer is part of a vague unconnected series of films where people encounter spirits and get killed. SK is number 4 and it's got a release date of 1994. Spirited Killer 2: Awakened Zombie Battles is another in the series. The dvd box says it was released in 1997. I'm certainly wasting more time than this mystery calls for. The print is pretty poor, damaged in many places, and it's been transfered without using an anamorphic lens to widen out the film. Everyone was pretty skinny until Spearhauk did some magic with his tv and Oppo DVD player. It looked fairly normal. Some folks are in a forrest, one of the only things common to all the movies in the series. One group is looking for the grave of the grandfather of one of the two women with the group. She's Chinese and she wants to take the body back to China. Some punks are looking for the grave of the grandfather because they heard there was some gold in there. Some gangsters are burying their dead boss. He was killed by police in a set up. The gang is distraut. The magician with the lady uses a spell to find the grandfather. It awakens the grandfather and the gang boss. The movie calls them zombies but they are really like the hopping vampires that were a staple of the Hong Kong Cinema. They hop and they have vampire teeth. Not much different. The groups fight. Not much else happens, there's some slapstick and some fart jokes. Like many of the Hok Kong movies of the 70's that it emulates this Thai movie drags and soon I was wish it was over. Eventaually it was. Buy at your own peril.